Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–287 of 287 posts

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#281

Post by dang »

cyberscientist wrote: post #222
hpcjoe wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"your own side" is quite revealing. There's a game siblings sometimes play. One hits another. The injured party responds in kind. The first, the aggressor, calls their parents and complains that the second hit the first and was the aggressor. The second is then punished by the parent for aggression. This has been the rhetorical, and effectively actual history of the conflicts since prior to the founding of Israel. Ir…

So Iran SAYS "Israel should be wiped out of the map", and that makes all ACTIONS (including boarder line terrorism) by Israel justified. Our way of buying into narratives and pushing them allows justifications for wars so easy. Just look at Iraq war. Narrative build and bought by us was that Sadam is bad and has bar weapons so let's go to war. Again I'm not defending Iran. In fact I really hate the regime. I'm just s…

Flamewar is not what this site is for. We've banned this account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#282

Post by dang »

ars wrote: post #267
pcbro141 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scientist I'm referring to (Mohsen Fakhrizadeh) was not killed as part of a legitimate strike on a military facility, he was killed in his car with his wife sitting in the seat next to him, on a road with many civilians around. I am doubtful that Iranian agents doing these same actions to scientists in the US or Israel on the street would be considered a legitimate military action and not terrorism.

> The scientist I'm referring to (Mohsen Fakhrizadeh) was not killed as part of a legitimate strike on a military facility, he was killed in his car with his wife sitting in the seat next to him, on a road with many civilians around. What are you talking about "facility"? The human, named Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was a military target, since he was the head of the nuclear weapons program in Iran. I'm unclear what the rele…

You have a long history of posting flamewar comments to HN. Would you please stop doing that? I've banned a whole bunch of accounts on both sides of this hellish thread, and it's dismaying to see a long-established account like yours getting in there and dragging things deeper into hell along with all the trolls. This is not what HN is supposed to be for. Surely you know that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#283

Post by yabones »

sschueller wrote: post #34

So who takes responsibility when one of these attacks results in a meltdown? And why does Iran not have the right to build their own atomic bomb when the US, Russia or China have them and are building new ones? We ALL should be reducing nuclear weapons including the US. But sadly the US has not been taking a leadership role recently Edit: Nice to see that my global nuclear disarmament comment is getting downvoted. /s

This type of attack isn't likely to cause a 'meltdown', since the uranium is usually in a very hot vaporous form while being centrifuged. If the containers rupture, it will spread out and condensate in a thin layer that's not very likely to reach criticality. Nuclear reprocessing absolutely has dangers, but meltdowns aren't really the issue.

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#284

Post by agumonkey »

dragontamer wrote: post #210
agumonkey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

still impressive secrecy management

But still not good enough. Legend has it that Stalin knew about the American bomb before Truman knew about it. Hiring literally thousands of high-schoolers without much job training has the advantages of being cheap back then, but you don't really know who was or wasn't a Soviet Agent. Similarly: having literally thousands of modern techs build a bomb manually would only turn the computer-security problem into a huma…

That's what I was curious about. Indeed the more persons the more leaks potentially, yet it seems that they took care of dilluting knowledge so nobody really knew what was for. I'd love to read about the soviet side of this story.

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#285

Post by klibertp »

Alupis wrote: post #258
whimsicalism wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was a tourist in Italy when he was abducted.

And Italy abducted him? I do not follow your point...

Still, keeping the guy who served his full sentence of nearly 20 years in the country (and with various additional restrictions) for anothe 15 years is not a nice thing to do. They should have shot him dead in Rome and be done with it, like in 2.5k other cases.

Nothing to do with the discussion here, just a random thought on the Vanunu matter.

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#286

Post by sbierwagen »

pvg wrote: post #229
sbierwagen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The workaround I've seen people use is hitting the edit button and replacing the entire comment with a - character.

That's not really a workaround, just put the fact that you edited the comment in the original comment. Better yet, add the new info as an edit and leave the original comment text as was so people can follow the conversation

I would have done that, if the edit window hadn't closed on my original comment by the time I read his reply.

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#287

Post by Protostome »

whimsicalism wrote: post #233
Protostome wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I doubt they would initiate a nuclear strike, knowing it means their annihilation. If someone with a gun holstered at their waist asked you to give you your money, would you refuse? If Iran will get access to nuclear weapons, it's status in international politics will change drastically, all leverages the west has on Iran (like the ability to impose sanctions upon human right violations and counter their violent exp…

Is that why we don't have the ability to impose sanctions on North Korea?

Firstly, the NK situation is terrible. South Koreans are basically living with a sword hanging above their neck 24/7.

I don't think that the middle east, being an unstable region to begin with, would benefit from yet such a major destabilizing factor.

Iran has an ability to inflict much more damage upon the west than NK and Pakistan combined. It is an oil rich country, neighbor to the one of the biggest oil exporters in the world and is located in the center one of the busiest naval traffic routes.

Post reply on HN